What Is Computer Clipboard (Pasteboard)?

Computer Clipboard is a special short term storage mechanism that is generally used to copy and paste text, image, graphics, files, and folders. The clipboard is also named as Pasteboard .

Clipboard contents are stored inside RAM without a name with a generic name descriptor. Only the latest copied file, image, text, folder is stored in the clipboard by default. But some 3rd party applications can be used to stored multiple clipboards and history and list and recall them with a simple application.

All major operating systems like Windows, Linux, and distributions, MacOS X, Android, and iOS supports clipboard with basic usage. For more complex usage like clipboard history, 3rd party applications or plugins should be installed.

Clipboard Management Tools

3rd party applications and plugins for clipboard is named as Clipboard Management Tools . These tools provide advanced features like below.

Autosave latest clips on exit

Audio notifications

Save clips according to size

Hotkey or keyboard shortcuts

Saving different type of clips into different folders

Save date and time information

Categorize the different type of clips

Clipboard Management Tools

Clipboard For Windows

Windows default clipboard provides basic features where copy operation will copy given object into the clipboard which can be a text, image, file or folder. But there are a lot of 3rd party applications that provide advanced features described in previous clipboard management tools. ClipClip is a very popular 3rd party clipboard management tool.

Clipboard For Linux

Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Kali, Fedora, CentOS, etc. provide a lot of different useful clipboard applications with advanced features. CopyQ is a tool which is similar to the Windows counterpart ClipClip.

Clipboard For Linux

Clipboard For MacOS X

Apple MacOS X also provides a complete clipboard as a builtin tool. The clipboard can be accessed from the Edit ->Show Clipboard a menu like below.